NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden continues to cower in Russia this week as his options narrow and Russian president Vladimir Putin makes it known that he's unwelcome.
The musclebound leader called Snowden an "unwanted gift" from America and said that the US campaign to ensure that he didn't hightail it off to some other country …

Re: Translation

Re: Translation

I have no real knowledge of Finnish, but it's rather odd that when you put "perkeleen" and "vittupää" into google translate seperately they come out as "the devil" and "m****rf****r" respectively, but put in together they come out as "f*****g m****rf****r".

Either Finnish as some really odd rules that change the meaning of a word when it's next to another word, or something is wrong with Google Translate. I've no idea which is more likely.

Re: Translation

Doesn't Google translate 'learn' from users' suggestions? I can easily imagine some drunken Finns on a Friday deciding the literal translation did not sound rude enough in English and going for "m*****f****r" because that's the rudest word you hear in American movies?

Continues to cower, eh. The man has literally and knowingly put his life on the line exposing what the US and British governments are doing behind our backs. They are going so far as to force down independently sovereign nation's jets in an attempt to get him and all you can do is sneer. The man is one of the bravest people in the world imo so it's sad to see the Reg doing this sort of pathetic sneering even if it is a tradition around here.

Re: "Cower" is the word

After the New York Times had been enjoined from publishing the Pentagon Papers — on June 15, 1971, the first prior restraint on a newspaper in U.S. history — and I had given another copy to The Post (which would also be enjoined), I went underground with my wife, Patricia, for 13 days. My purpose (quite like Snowden’s in flying to Hong Kong) was to elude surveillance while I was arranging — with the crucial help of a number of others, still unknown to the FBI — to distribute the Pentagon Papers sequentially to 17 other newspapers, in the face of two more injunctions. The last three days of that period was in defiance of an arrest order: I was, like Snowden now, a “fugitive from justice.”

Yet when I surrendered to arrest in Boston, having given out my last copies of the papers the night before, I was released on personal recognizance bond the same day. Later, when my charges were increased from the original three counts to 12, carrying a possible 115-year sentence, my bond was increased to $50,000. But for the whole two years I was under indictment, I was free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures. I was, after all, part of a movement against an ongoing war. Helping to end that war was my preeminent concern. I couldn’t have done that abroad, and leaving the country never entered my mind.

There is no chance that experience could be reproduced today, let alone that a trial could be terminated by the revelation of White House actions against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon’s era — and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment — but are today all regarded as legal (including an attempt to “incapacitate me totally”).

I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.

seriously Heaven forbid we were without Linus. I personally think LINUX may be capable of correcting some of the extreemly bad thinking that has been incorporated into some software -- which now causes a LOT of Security Trouble

The Finnish language

is incredibly difficult to comprend grammarwise if your native tounge is of Latin/German origin. Like Swedish and German, it is an extremely descriptive language; it creates new words as they are needed. For instance:

In Swedish: Kernel -> Kärna. Linux kernel is therefore 'Linuxkärna'. A brand new word, unlike English where the two words are kept separate.

On top of that, and this is the really difficult bit, new words appear depending on what you are doing to the Linux kernel and who's doing it; one word for someone compiling the kernel, another word for debugging the kernel, robbing the kernel, eating the kernel ..

Re: The Finnish language

I'm a native Hungarian speaker, I have to say you ain't seen nothing if you think Finnish grammar is hard - try Hungarian, it's often considered the second hardest (after Chinese) to crack for any Westerner...

Torvalds is Finnish by birth, but he was born into and brought up in a Swedish-speaking minority within Finland hence his obviously Swedish sounding name. His Finnish is conversationally excellent but he's not 100% fluent and it took him many years.

Finnish is an exceptionally strange and hideously complex language which doesn't seem to be in any way related to languages in the surrounding region. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are quite similar but Finnish comes out of left field and makes no sense at all.

Spoiler alert: the eternal but dead President of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, was brought up speaking Mandarin and didn't speak a word of Korean until he was a teenager.